The beauty of having family around is that there is someone else nearby to remind me of favourite foods and convince me to cook them even though I’ve never made them before, such as Malawach…

Malawach is a Yemanaite flat bread, made of leafy dough (more similar to that of croissant rather than filo dough) that is pan fried and served with the traditional Yemanite condiments: hilbeh (a fenugreek paste, which will make you smell of fenugreek for an entire week following the feast), zehug (a very hot paste made with pepper, garlic and coriander). In Israel, these can be had with no hard work or Yemanite root, via the frozen section of most supermarkets and requires minimal preparation. In Canada, of course, nobody heard of Malawach, let alone capitalize on it as a frozen product. And so me and my brother Noam hd no choice but to make our own, from scratch. We set off today to make the most delicious brunch possible – one that left us un-hungry for many hours to come (we ate around 11am and weren’t able to eat anything else until about 9pm!).I took care of the Malawach, and my brother made the zhug. Here is the recipes for what we’ve made – and I hope you will feel inspired to make them yourself. They are simply delicious and slightly addictive.